Still Life of an Annihilation
by ckret2
Summary: Once, Madara would have given anything to make sure the young artist stayed free forever. But by the end, he just wanted to keep Deidara for himself. And that is how he destroyed the most beautiful thing in the world. Oneshot. Onesided MadaraDeidara.


A/N: For all of you who have me on author's alert and are annoyed at me for posting something new rather than updating something I've got in the works, I'm very sorry. For all the rest of you... hi! This was written for the 10 Songs Meme, although all references to songs have been removed. The (unsightly, hideous) original draft is still up on my LJ, which is linked in my profile. Though I don't know why you'd want to see it.

Warnings: bits of PG-13 language, character death (well duh), a semi-stalkery one-sided obsession-disguised-as-romance, and brief slight accidental pedoness. (I can't help it! Deidara joined Akatsuki at like thirteen years old! I can show you my math.) This is a one-sided Madara/Deidara fic, meaning that Madara/Tobi will be acting more like Madara than like Tobi, and that there will not be any reciprocal emotions from Deidara. Enjoy the unrequited infatuation.

Disclaimer: Naruto and all associated characters belong to Masashi Kishimoto; I only own this fic.

Edit: Because even so long after their policy change, this site is STILL messing up my scene-dividers, I have put in new ones. Apologies to all of you who read this as one big flowing chunk of fic; it wasn't designed that way. Hrrmph.

x

Still Life of an Annihilation

x

Madara is well over a century old, and at some point he stopped believing in love.

Half a century ago, he gave up waiting for someone. There was nobody who met his standards. Nobody who equaled him. Nobody whom he could push without fearing that he'd push too hard. Nobody in the universe worthy of being placed on that pedestal he had reserved for somebody he could love.

He had accepted that.

He isn't very romantic, and never had been, even in his youth. Even so, he had always—he had always kept _hoping_, on some level, that there would be somebody that he could reach for, fingers twitching, somebody that he could grab onto, and...

...and never have to let go.

He had held on and held on to hope, somewhere in the back of his mind, behind his plans and his schemes and his everyday business; leading the Uchiha clan, fighting for revolution, wandering the continent.

And then he'd given up hope.

Madara is not the type to "settle" for second best in any aspect of his life; that would include, if it had ever come up, romance. Not that it ever came up, because he had given up on waiting. And so the pedestal, that empty pedestal he had polished for so many decades, on which he would someday be able to place that one person with whom he could share himself—the pedestal had been pushed into the corner of his mind, to sit in the shadows and collect dust.

Then came the day that the pedestal was illuminated by a bright flash of light; an explosion of fireworks heralded the ascent of the only person who ever dared to step upon it. And all he could think was, "The hell?"

x

The first time Madara saw the damn kid, he was only twelve years old. Which was way too young. Too young for Madara to even _think_ about—but he didn't think about _that_, of course. All he really thought about was the kid's body.

Not in that way. Not in some... perverse, carnal way.

But in the way it moved as a whole. How every piece connected to every other piece—the kid didn't just move a hand or turn his head; when he moved, _all_ of him moved, all at once. His every motion was carefully choreographed, not a single muscle flexing that wasn't in sync with the rest of his body. So graceful. He was pure fluidity, a rush of wind, a flooding river, a directed explosion.

Most people would say that the kid was just too damn fidgety.

But every motion had purpose. Madara watched him, and watched him, his one unconcealed eye spinning hungrily; when the boy ran, every part of his body flowed. When he fought, he fought with his feet and fingers and his eyes and his mouth. And when he triggered an explosion—oh, those explosions—his entire body trembled as he formed the final fatal seal.

Madara had only seen the boy for a few minutes, the young missing-nin, and quite by accident; he had just happened to be there as he ran past, as he blew past him, fleeing hunter-nin from Iwagakure. They were nothing compared to him.

And in that moment Madara would have done anything to ensure that the boy would keep moving.

x

Madara spent the next year following Deidara's illustrious young career.

He didn't know the first thing about art, really. He still doesn't. But to his eyes, everything that Deidara did was a work of sheer genius.

He explored the Land of Stone and every bit of it that Deidara had touched. He explored Iwagakure especially, going to all the museums that displayed Deidara's younger works—yes, the thirteen-year-old had _younger_ works. The child was a genius, a prodigy, a wunderkind.

Madara demeaned himself to shuffling along in the back of the packs of happy tourists that took the guided tours through the exhibits of Deidara's artwork, listening to the tour guides, and memorizing everything about Deidara's technique. He didn't know a thing about art except what he learned about Deidara's art.

He listened to all the quotes that the tour guides claimed Deidara had once said about his style. And everything Deidara said rang true to him, sang true in his head: real art was an explosion, a moment of blazing glory, a bright light in the dark.

For a moment, Madara felt ashamed of his long, ugly life.

But there were two things he knew now.

The first was that he was not alone in his opinion of Deidara; many people saw what he saw, a rising genius.

The second was that he had to have that genius for himself.

x

Even seven years after he'd first seen that boy, sometimes it was all Madara could do to keep from reaching out and grabbing Deidara, pulling him to his chest, and refusing to ever let him go again. There were no words for how badly he _wanted _him, to keep him forever.

So he walked beside him, from village to village, mission to mission. He called him "sempai," because there was no way he could call Deidara the things he _wanted_ to call him. And he never tried to go any farther than that.

Mainly because he knew there was no point to it. Somewhat distantly, he recognized that Deidara despised him, even if he couldn't quite understand why. Maybe on some level, Deidara could sense the way Madara felt, and it repulsed him. Deidara lived without rules, as uncontrollable and destructive as the rapids of a flooding river, and such a river would naturally push away at anything that tried to dam it and tame it. He would not take well to someone who wanted to hold onto him as badly as Madara did.

Even if Madara never acted on it, and knew he never would.

But that didn't stop him from feeling. It didn't stop his fingers from twitching. It didn't stop his mouth from drying, his back from sweating. It didn't stop his Sharingan from blazing to life by itself and whirling, memorizing the way Deidara's hair twirled in the breeze and fluttered in the blasts of his explosion.

Sometimes when he thought Deidara was asleep, lying facedown on his futon with his arms up around his face—sometimes Madara would slip over beside him, lay a hand on his cover—just the corner of the sheet, the far corner of the sheet down by Deidara's feet—and he'd leave his hand there, for maybe a minute. Touching the sheet that was touching Deidara as he slept.

And that was all.

x

Usually, Madara didn't think about what he was doing to Deidara. All he knew was that he fucking wanted him to himself, and there had never been a time before when he wasn't powerful enough to get what he wanted.

But there were times when he saw Deidara the way he was, not the way Madara wanted him to be. And he saw a young man who had lost control of his own life.

He didn't want to obey somebody else's laws. He had proven that when he ran away from Iwagakure, to pursue his own art on his own terms with his own rules. He cared more about his freedom than about the village he had abandoned when he was only twelve years old, and he certainly didn't care about Akatsuki; all that kept him in the organization was his own sense of failure. If he wasn't good enough to defeat the Uchiha that had forced him to join, then he hadn't earned the right to be free, to be an unfettered artist.

Deidara didn't want to be bound up, controlled, and channeled. But as long as he was in Akatsuki, that was what he was.

Madara hadn't cared. He had wanted Deidara. So he had ordered Nagato to get the boy into Akatsuki by any means, Nagato had passed the order to Itachi, and here it all was, just like Madara had demanded.

But he had never noticed—he had never realized—he had never allowed himself to think about what captivity would do to Deidara.

It was destroying his art. It was destroying his reputation, his fame. Deidara could have been world-famous by now, if he had been allowed to continue making those brilliantly theatrical works that he so badly wanted to and needed to make, if he didn't have to squander his precious home-made clay on common bombs. He put what artistry he could into his work, but it wasn't enough, and it was nothing he would be remembered for. He was sacrificing his art for an organization he loathed.

But Madara would rather have Deidara in his hands, living up to only a fraction of his capabilities, than let him fulfill his potential somewhere else.

x

"Tobi" wasn't really much of a mask.

For all that Madara has done—found a village, lead a clan, fight a Hokage, become a Mizukage—he isn't actually a very serious guy. At times, he really can be rather goofy. When he can find an opportunity to be, at least.

And being with Deidara was the perfect opportunity.

Madara is over a century old, and most of that century has been spent locked down in stiff anger and formality, as is befitting a true ninja. He hates it, he always has, but when has he had a chance to act differently? When he was at war with the Senju clan? When he was trying to persuade his clan to rebel? Or perhaps during those many decades he spent on the run from hunter-nin, planning to both avenge and get revenge on the Uchiha clan?

But being with Deidara was different. There was no constant threat, no danger, no business to attend to that was more pressing than rounding up a few wild multi-tailed animals. Every second spent with him was a joy. Madara was free to let his shoulders relax, to let the anger seep out of his limbs—heck, he practically melted whenever he was within arm's length of Deidara.

It was a rare opportunity—and it was a fleeting one. Madara always knew that, even when he was fantasizing that he could hold onto Deidara forever. And so he was ferociously happy, violently joyful, squeezing every bit of cheer he could out of every second he spent as Deidara's partner. He didn't care how much that annoyed said partner. Just as long as Deidara was near by, as long as he answered when Madara called, as long as he acknowledged his existence by rolling his eyes or snorting or grimacing whenever he did something ridiculous—Madara had survived too, too many experiences to let himself be hurt, either physically or emotionally, by anything Deidara could do to him. As long as he had Deidara, he was happy.

Maybe Deidara wasn't a love interest after all. Maybe he was just Madara's anti-depressant.

x

Deidara died loathing, in no particular order, the Uchiha clan collectively, and Itachi, Sasuke, and Tobi individually. And as Madara watched him vanish in a tower of light—Deidara's final and most fleeting masterpiece—he knew without a doubt that he had messed things up.

He should have known better. He should have known better than to think that he could kidnap Deidara into Akatsuki, force his friendship upon him, and then expect anything but hatred in return. He should have known that he couldn't grab Deidara, that free-blowing wind, that wild river, and shove him into a box and lock it up tight, and then expect that wind to keep blowing and that water to keep flowing.

Once, Madara would have done anything to make sure that Deidara kept moving. He still doesn't know at what point he gave up on that, when he had decided that _he_ was more important than Deidara.

He had tried too hard. He had reached out, fingers twitching, and grabbed onto Deidara—and held him so tight that he crushed him.

Madara had destroyed the most beautiful thing in the world.

After Deidara's death, he couldn't sleep soundly for months.

x

Maybe he'd change.

He could, he could still give up the Moon's Eye Plan, his crazy scheme—and now that he thought about it, it was pretty damn crazy, wasn't it?! To try to control an entire world with some elaborate illusion—no. What an ugly idea. Such a stagnant world, a frozen unvarying lump... where was the... the beauty in that?

Where was the ephemeral, the transient, the fleeting glory? The bright light in the dark that could shine with brilliance for a moment, and then vanish forever? What were the constellations compared to a fireworks display? What was a solid unchanging world compared to a world of war, of fire, of revenge? Where anything could end with a bang?

He missed Deidara.

Maybe he would change. There was only a sick taste in his mouth when he thought of his grand plan now, and of trying to complete it in a world where there wasn't someone like _that_.

At night when he dozed, his fingers still reached out, twitching, trying to grasp at lights that flickered out and died.

But it was too late for him to change. He had nothing to gain for it. There was no art left in the world—in a fleeting moment, a 19-year-old fleeting moment, art had come and lit up the world and gone. Giving up now wouldn't bring it back.

Maybe... maybe in his perfect world, his illusion, he could make Deidara live again.

x

After Deidara's death, time shattered into a million pieces; the explosion that destroyed Deidara had shaken up all sense of order in Madara's head, and he was left with fragments of schemes and vague instincts that kept him moving forward.

But at some point, among the fragments that came after—some time, he thought, in between recruiting Sasuke and revealing his face to Kisame, somewhere in there—he knew one night of peace, when the aftershocks of the explosion had subsided and he was left in calm.

And he remembered. In crisp images, with perfect recollection, in Sharingan-stored sequences of scene after scene, he remembered.

The color of Deidara's hair, of his clay, and of his fiery explosions. The sound of his voice when he grumbled, when he philosophized, when he made that odd little sound that _should_ have been annoying but that Madara just found endearing. The way his eyes filled with hate when he smiled and with glee when he scowled—and how he was never happier than when he was furious.

He remembered every time Deidara had ever touched him—even if it had only been to choke him, to hit him, to blast him half a day's walk away. Madara had enjoyed every second of it. As long as it meant Deidara felt some emotion for him; after all, Madara didn't let himself get hurt easily.

And he remembered his art—probably all that Deidara truly wished to be remembered for, if he wished to be remembered at all. The beautiful sculptures, smooth and pale, reduced to the most basic of shapes—something solid and complete and graceful, just like Deidara's body when it moved. He remembered how the explosions dazzled and deafened. Deidara's art. It was the only art that Madara understood, an art of destruction and ending and changes, an art that could avenge and ruin and kill.

And when Madara remembered, for just a moment, he could make peace with Deidara's absence.

x

As Madara saw it, he now had two choices: to keep living without Deidara, or not.

It wasn't a hard choice to make.

After all, Madara was in the habit of living. It was a habit he had cultivated over a hundred years—and at times it had been very difficult to keep living. Many people, particularly people who disliked him, had tried very hard to convince him to give up the habit, usually by employing rather violent methods of persuasion. And yet he was still alive. He had given up on almost everything but living a long time ago; he had given up, for example, on ever finding anyone like Deidara.

So it wasn't really much of a loss, was it?

Madara would move on. He would complete his plan, he would get his revenge, and he would control his world.

Because he can't be like Deidara; he can't create something beautiful to light up the sky. He can only force his ugly power over everyone else.

He is no artist. He's never understood art—he still doesn't. And he's too old to change that now.

Because Madara is over a century old, and long before he met Deidara, he had stopped believing in love.

x


End file.
